Berkeley, CA-based Aduro is handing over $7.5 million to UC Berkeley for a 3-year program to investigate a new class of immunotherapeutics called cyclic dinucleotides as well as natural killer (NK) cells. Their work will cover cancer as well as infectious diseases and there's an option to extend the pact by an additional three years. "We're increasingly finding that immune stimulants associated with disease-causing microbes work as cancer therapies, and conversely, that immunotherapies for cancer may have application in fighting infectious disease," said IVRI director David Raulet, a professor and co-chair of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. "Bringing infectious disease and cancer researchers together in a synergistic research effort at UC Berkeley and Aduro Biotech is an exciting and unique idea, and could be where the next generation of therapies will come from." Release